Rating: 
Summary: Q.E.D.
Review: This book demonstrates that biography is no exception to the adage that brevity is the soul of wit. Gleick divides this short but comprehensive biography into short chapters that respectively address each aspect of Newton's work: the calculus, the laws of gravity and motion, optics, alchemy, theology and so on. Moreover, each chapter succinctly but vividly describes the phase in Newton's life in which that work was performed and finally published, so that the reader moves chronologically through Newton's life while examining each of his monumental achievements. In 188 pages (not counting the informative, pertinent footnotes) Gleick tells the story of Newton's life, describes (but,thankfully, does not try to explain) his peculiar personality, sets out, in layman's terms, the basics of his most important discoveries, and places those discoveries in their social and historical context. Other biographers should take heed; readers with an interest in science and intellectual history should hasten to buy this book!
Rating:
Summary: Buy this book
Review: This book does a great job of documenting Newton's life and ideas in a very concise way. It is extremely well written. Even if you are not particularly interested in physics, I think it would not bore you. It could even be read by someone with little knowledge of, or remembrance of, mathematics. This book actually interested me enough that I went out and bought Westfall's 900 page biography of Newton, which I would not have predicted beforehand. Anyway, buy this book.
Rating: 
Summary: IF YOU READ ONLY ONE BOOK ABOUT NEWTON, THIS SHOULD BE IT
Review: This book is less than 200 pages, accurate and unforgiving (doesn't try to glamourize Newton, did you know, for instance, that despite that notorious Apple incident he was an acute un-romantic and never as much as "set his eyes on the ocean"?), has loads of very interesting personal trivia about Newton the man (e.g., he prefered A.C. to A.D. because he didn't believe in the concept of the Holy Trinity) and above all, is written with a very lucid, fast-paced narrative.Which, sadly, is also the book's weakness. It is crisp and entertaining, and whatever little math is mentioned is easily comprehensible by average Joe and his dog. But due to its size, the book merely scratches the surface of Newton's illustrious life and ideas. Nothing is mentioned for example about his part time alchemy experiments that make him look not as scientific as his image would have people believe. As an introduction, or a starting point for someone curious about the legendary scientist, this book hits the mark very well. If you only read one book about Newton, this would be a good investment of your time. But keep in mind that this only gives you a glimpse of all his accomplishments and personality.
Rating:
Summary: So Good I Got My Brother a Copy
Review: This excellent book is commendable for many reasons--clarity, brevity, organization, insight, charactarization and last but not least its fascinating subject, a genius who emerged from an isolated farmstead in 17th Century England and invented modern science. The portrait of the young, solitary Newton building experiments in light on the stone wall behind his house, honing his precise observation and experimentation in a tiny dark room, is unforgettable. Newton's world is far distant from our own, and Gleick brings it alive. Some reviewers have commented on the relative paucity of scientific and mathimatical information, but I am more impressed by the clarity of what is there. This wasn't intended to be an exhaustive biography or complete scientific appreciation (though the excellent bibliography and notes provide more possibilities than could possibly be explored.) It is a tour de force for any intelligent reader.
Rating:
Summary: "Voyaging through strange seas of Thought"
Review: This is a concise but comprehensive biography of Isaac Newton by James Gleick, a scientific writer with an extraordinarily lucid narrative prose style. Drawing from the most recent acquisitions of Newton's formerly scattered manuscripts at the Cambridge University libraries, Gleick has produced a valuable updated chronicle of the life of the man to whom so much of modern science owes its greatest debt. Over fifteen relatively short chapters, he reconstructs the germination of Newton's ideas and explains the personal dramas they engendered and which became a large part of his reputation. Newton may have been being insincerely humble when he said that "standing on the shoulders of giants" enabled him to see farther than others. His concepts about gravity, light, and motion, although influenced by the work of his forebears, were entirely original, as he himself would be the first to insist. Taking his method of inquiry from Aristotle, Newton was primarily an experimental scientist who would put no faith in a hypothesis that could not be tested. Reclusive, secretive, celibate, but undeniably brilliant, he turned his room at Trinity College at Cambridge into a laboratory and an inner sanctum where he would think, experiment, and write, all for his own information. His search for a mathematical technique to describe physical phenomena in terms of infinitesimal elements led to the development of calculus, a shotgun wedding of Galileo's theories of motion and Descartes's analytical geometry. His adult life essentially had two distinct eras: first, as a student, scientist, and professor at Trinity College; and second, as a public figure serving as Warden and then Master of the royal Mint, a position which proved him ruthless in enforcing the death penalty for counterfeiters. He befriended many men of stature, among them Samuel Pepys and John Locke, but he made enemies of many more: He hotly debated the eminent Robert Hooke, Secretary of the Royal Society of London, over the nature of light; he tried to expropriate observatory data from John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal; and he conducted a furious epistolary battle with Gottfried Leibniz over proper credit for the invention of calculus. (Leibniz, working independently, advantageously devised a more useful notation and published his accomplishments before Newton did.) Gleick uncovers aspects of Newton's life that are not usually emphasized, such as his interest in alchemy, the pseudo-science of making gold out of baser metals, which at the time was still a popular pursuit among the learned. Newton was also an avid student of scripture; he rejected Trinitarianism, which was a risky religious stance for a professor at Trinity College. A century after his death he even acquired a strange legendary status among the Romantic poets Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth (quoted in the title of my review), and Blake, who regarded him with a sort of dreadful awe as a man who dared to solve the mysteries of nature with cold rationality. The work of no other scientist has been able to touch so many different levels of culture as Newton's has, and that, perhaps, is Gleick's theme.
Rating:
Summary: fascinating masterpiece, with just the right level of detail
Review: This is a short bio of Newton that is emminently readable and explains his achievements in historical perspective. It does not go into excessive scientific detail, but explains the gist in a truly masterful popularization. I am sure that scientists will find the treatment too light, but for the general reader it is perfect in my view.
Newton essentially created a new kind of mathematics, which came to be known as calculus. It involved the use of infinities to describe certain shapes and so was a great break with previous mathematical assumptions. In what can only be called a work of genius, Newton then applied this mathematics to the motion of the planets, positing the force of gravity as the explanation for why it all held together. Newton also did fundamental experiments in optics, which reflected his remarkable ability to observe and record/descirbe what he saw in scientific language. Gleick also explores Newton's involvement in strange strains of mysticism, a remnant of the middle ages and unlike the Enlightenment with which he came to be associated.
On a personal level, Newton was a solitary man with no apparent romantic relationships. Gleick does not speculate on is sexuality and avoids other areas about which we cannot know. Late in life, he became rich as a controller of the currency for the Crown.
Warmly recommended. Gleick is a science writer of great talent.
Rating:
Summary: This man could think.
Review: This is a short book, 272 pages: 191 text, the rest are footnotes, a bibliography and an index. I read it in two days.
The main problem with this book is that you don't see what is happening around England or Europe as the times are changing, and Newton who is both a part and not a part of the change.
He did not like to publish. But it wasn't long before everyone at Cambridge knew that he was a special scientist.
He had strange obsessions in religion, in alchemy; but this man could think.
What this book lacks is the drama of the day, how he single handedly changed science and mathematics. How the drama of science was really unfolding around him. The book does not spend a lot of time on the other avocation after he left Cambridge, to be the Master of the Mint. It touches on the controversies, but it would have been more informative to see the whole debate.
Reading this book is like looking at a man far away with the aid of a telescope, you see the man but not what is around the man.
Would I recommend it? Yes as an introduction. But a better book would be Newton: his life and times.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent - and then just stops
Review: This, like James Gleick's other books, is well written and interesting. It provides very pleasurable reading - and you are really getting into it when it finishes. It's as if he got just sick of writing it.
Rating:
Summary: A universal mind
Review: With almost poetic grace, Gleick portrays the life and thinking of history's most expansive mind. Works on Newton aren't as common as might be expected. The task of addressing such a monumental mentality is formidable, to say the least. Only the most ambitious or analytical could attempt it. Gleick's effort encompasses the major facets of Newton's life, including his academic, political and religious aspects. He avoids the modern approach of delving into Newton's psyche or recapitulating three centuries of scholarly disputation. Even the "falling apple" story is redrawn as Newton's realisation that apparent size compared with distance expressed a relationship needing explanation. The result is a clean, unobstructed view of a complex man - and his legacy. From meagre beginnings Newton carved an expansive niche in European scholarship. His skills, noted early, brought him a Cambridge appointment at 27. Already showing great promise, he was a reluctant publisher. He sequestered himself in his rooms, later in a small cottage. He'd lived almost alone during his childhood, but his curiosity led him in many directions. The prism experiments, breaking sunlight with a prism, began his long career in what is now deemed "physics". Light's properties were the subject of great dispute, with Newton holding to emitted particles. Waves seemed to adhere to the Cartesian "vortices" which Newton found suspect. Playing with mirrors and lenses led to the reflecting telescope widely used today. Thinking about the heavenly bodies he observed led, of course, to his idea of gravitational attraction. Not a popular idea then, since such forces were disdained. It's difficult to assess whether his delving into the facts of nature led to his personal isolation, or the reverse holds. Gleick shows how Newton focussed on problems with an intensity few have demonstrated. Even in employment as Warden of the Mint, Newton pursued counterfeiters with a Rambo-like dedication - even accompanying culprits to the gallows. His brief stint as a Member of Parliament, however, was virtually silent. He was perturbed by his developing scepticism of the Holy Trinity - this while teaching at the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Cambridge University. These thoughts, too, he kept closely concealed. Only the dispute over gravity with Robert Hooke brought him reluctantly forth. Although Newton's accomplishments were vast, Gleick relates how the great thinker understood he was only uncovering beginnings. Even those beginnings, however, were deemed "mechanistic" by the later Romantics - a label applied to science even today. Gleick rebuts this hostile view in his conclusion. However Newton's personality is viewed, his accomplishments readily surpass puerile complaints. Without him, Gleick reminds us, much of today's world would not exist. Cassini would not be orbiting Saturn, returning its amazing images to us, without him. This book isn't highly detailed, and that's right and proper. Massive volumes of Newton's life already exist. Gleick has provided a tasteful and effective teaser for those wishing to learn more of this amazing man. He's even provided images of some of Newton's notes and observations imparting the flavour of Newton's thinking. Start here, you will not be disappointed. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
|
